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Columbia Family Medical Group’s welcoming atmosphere is obvious, even through their entrance door.

Upon entering the Columbia Family Medical Group office, visitors and patients are welcomed by a helping hands quilt hanging proudly just inside the door. Created by CFMG staff members at the time of their 25th anniversary, the quilt is covered with appliqued hands signed by physicians and nurse practitioners past, one of whom is still present, representing the helping hands of the CFMG family.

Since 1976

Columbia Family Medical Group was started over 35 years ago by a duo of physicians, just out of residency, with a mission statement that remains true to this day: provide comprehensive quality medical care at a reasonable cost to patients.

Patients Over Generations

The dedication to patient care CFMG provides is clear: families come back through generations.

“The beauty of Columbia Family Medical Group is we can provide for the whole family,” Eva says, thoughtfully. “I think one of the best things about this practice is we see generations of patients. You can all come in at the same time or separately. Everyone knows which physician to call for whatever they need.”

Several of the physicians have been with CFMG for 20 years; Dr. George Prica, Jr., M.D., is currently in his 35th year.

“The doctors are now seeing children of patients they delivered themselves!” exclaims Eva, laughing.

Medical Services

The six physicians of CFMG provide a range of medical services including: annual physicals, baby and well child checks, allergy testing and treatment of acute and chronic aliments.

“Basically, we cover the full gamut,” says Eva, smiling.

While all of the CFMG physicians are all family practice MDs, they do each have a specific interest in which they enjoy treating such as mental health, women’s wellness and children care.

“When new patients calls,” explains Eva, “we try and fit them with a physician whom they can connect to.”

Reliable Convenience

A physician is on-call 24/7; when the phone rings at CFMG the nurses and physicians who answer do the best they can to provide patients with care that same day.

Illnesses and ailments know no schedule; because of this, CFMG has hours past typical physicians’ offices; Saturday mornings, between the hours of 9am and 11:30am, a physician will be available for walk-in patients.

“It’s really for Friday evenings, if your child is just not feeling good,” explains Eva, “or for those who wake up Saturday morning feeling ill and you think they may need an antibiotic. Just walk in and we’ll see you and send you on your way.”

NextGen & NextMD

Adding ease and efficiency to the office, CFMG utilizes NextGen, an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, to safely store a patient’s medical history. With access to records from any of their office tablets and computers, physicians and nurses save valuable time usually spent searching through paper records.

Within NextGen is NextMD, an online patient portal allowing patients access to a variety of options including online bill pay, medication lists, prescription refill and appointment requests, even results of previous exams and lab work.

“It’s a really convenient service,” says Eva. “It’s one way we send info to the patient. Once lab results are back we send it to the patient portal and the patients gets an email stating, ‘You have a message on the NextMD portal. Please sign in to check it.’”

A Solid ConnectionThe dedication to patient care CFMG provides is clear: families come back through generations.

The medical world is constantly evolving and utilizing more and more comprehensive software and technology. Upon the addition of the NextGen software, CFMG’s Internet speed needed a boost.

At the recommendation of Jesse Yankee, owner of EasyPC, Eva set up a meeting with Tranquility Internet General Manager, Travis Schumacher.

“We liked the fact Tranquility is local,” explains Eva. “I needed an explanation about why their service was the better way to go and quite frankly, several other people recommended Tranquility because they were really happy with them.”

CFMG has been with Tranquility since 2009, starting out with 3MB Metro Dedicated Internet service (DIA), and later upgrading to 20 MB DIA and 20 MB Ethernet Transport to support their software upgrades.

Since the Tranquility upgrade, CFMG’s Internet is faster than ever.

Dedicated Internet Access

“It was really an easy experience,” describes Eva of the initial installation and setup of their Internet. “We made the decision; the install happened.”

There have been many successful improvements in the day to day operations of CFMG since their Internet upgrades.

“Before, we hesitated to multitask using both screens,” Eva explains, gesturing to her computer monitors, “Now, I can have several things open. We don’t have to think about it, we can just open what we need and get on with our work. That’s one of the greatest improvements.”

Patient check-in time has improved exponentially and now programs open easily, increasing overall productivity.

“You don’t think about the 5 seconds it could take for a window to open,” says Eva, “but that adds up. You begin to notice real time.”

Down-to-Earth Customer Service

High speed Internet is just one of the services Tranquility provides. The Tranquility staff knows not everyone is a techie; they take the extra time to patiently explain technical aspects customers may not fully understand.

“Travis is kind of an educator,” laughs Eva. “I’m not a computer person; I’m still amazed I can see it at the office AND at home! When I ask questions, he’s very open to explaining how things work.”

When a customer calls Tranquility they’re connected to a person; if the same customer calls back, they generally speak with the same customer service rep. The staff at Tranquility is aware how painful being placed on hold can be, especially having to explain their situation over and over to different people.

“We had a small issue,” explains Eva, “and I had to make several phone calls to Tranquility. I got to speak to the same person each time and I would get calls back from that same person with updates.”

With foundations built on family values, Columbia Family Medical Group provides health care to generations of families while family-owned Tranquility provides for the well-being of their Internet.

]]>0mayecreatehttp://tranquility.net/?p=54762014-05-02T17:02:01Z2014-05-08T06:00:38ZYour computer is made up of hardware and software. Software determines how you interact with your computer, but hardware determines if your computer works. At some point, your hard drive – the piece of hardware responsible for storing and retrieving digital information – will eventually die.

According to Backblaze, 80 percent of hard drives last for four years or more. Most hard drive failures come completely unexpected for the computer owner. Here are six signs that can tip you off to an impending hard drive crash:

1. Computer Crashes

Computer crashes come in many forms and even colors. Sudden reboots are a sign of a possible hard drive failure. As is the blue screen of death, when your computer screen turns blue, freezes and may require rebooting. A strong sign of a hard drive failure is a computer crash when you are trying to access files. If your computer crashes when you are trying to open a file, that’s a good sign that the piece of hardware holding the information on your computer – aka your hard drive – is facing difficulties.

2. Slowness and Frequent Freezing

Slowness and freezing could be caused by anything, but don’t shrug this problem off. Try a fresh reinstallation of Windows. If the problem persists, it’s likely the hardware on your computer, perhaps your hard drive.

3. Corrupted Data

Corrupted data shows itself through files that fail to open, open with errors even though they were closed with none or simply disappear. Like slowness and freezing, this problem could have many causes. However, it is typically a sign of a gradual hard drive failure or a virus.

4. Odd Sounds

Grind. Screech. Click. All of these sounds are a very bad omen for your computer’s hard drive. If you’re hearing these sounds, it may be too late to save your hard drive, because parts of it are failing. Some common sounds that correspond with hard drive failures are metallic sounds during loading and the click of death caused by the head of the hard drive.

5. Accumulation of Bad Sectors

Bad sectors are areas of the hard drive that do not maintain data integrity. They can be hard to find, because they are often covered up by the operating system. To identify them, you can run a manual disk check: Go to Start > Computer. Right-click on the disk or partition you want to check. In the new window, select Properties. Then, switch to the Tools tab and click Check Now. Finally, place a checkmark next to Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors.

6. Bad Messages

Sometimes, your computer will send you more overt messages that your hard drive is about to fail. Here are some of the messages that may pop up while using your computer:

“Operating System Not Found”

This message could point to a virus, corrupt operating system files, hardware issue or possibly a crashed hard drive.

“Drive Not Formatted”

When this message appears, your computer typically only gives you one option – to “format now”- but formatting your drive would delete all of your files. If you see this message, it means your computer is not recognizing your hard drive, because some crucial data on the drive is corrupt. Instead of formatting your drive, try the drive on another computer or use a data recovery tool.

“Primary Drive or Device Not Found”

Again, this message is a result of your computer not recognizing your hard drive. This could be caused by a virus or a problem with your hard drive. Your hard drive could either have a loose interface cable or could have lost data.

Any of these problems could be a sign that your hard drive is about to fail, but a lot of times your hard drive will fail when you are least expecting it. If you have files or data that is important to you, back it up to an external hard drive or cloud storage. That way you are always ready for the unexpected.

Here at 307 Locust St, we have a special arrangement: Tranquility Internet, an Internet service provider, and MayeCreate Design, a web and graphic design company, share an office space. That’s right, techies and creatives coming together to work in the same space. This is how both sides not only manage but thrive in such an environment.

When Communicating Paint a Picture, Don’t Give a Task

Don’t just give your employees the steps needed to get from point A to point B. Instead tell them the story of what you want. Explain how you want a project to feel or what problem needs solved. By doing this, you give them more room to solve the problem in their own way, more room to explore. They’ll be more creative, motivated and fast at solving your problem.

Be Honest About Your Skills and Shortcomings

If you are both a creative and tech-skilled person, then you are one among few. When you are working with a group of people with a wide variety of skills, it’s okay not to possess all of the same skills. Be honest to your team when you are asked about something outside of your skill-set. Chances are they’ll be happy to explain and appreciate your honesty.

Get Together

If you’re having trouble understanding each other, get your team together outside of normal work hours. Your team will appreciate the relaxed atmosphere and will be able to get to know each other better. If you have a team with a lot of differences, this is a great way to create understanding.

Hold Team Trainings

Tranquility and MayeCreate hold separate team trainings for sessions related to their industries, but some of our team trainings include everyone. These trainings cover issues such as teamwork, goal-setting and other related topics. We also have employees complete the DISC profile assessment which gives a report on their personality type. We educate our team on these personality types and how to work with people who are different than themselves.

]]>0mayecreatehttp://tranquility.net/?p=57212014-03-05T18:52:23Z2014-03-05T18:27:01ZYou may have noticed…

You may have noticed a change in the way you sign into your spam-filtered email account. Our normal Tranquility-branded sign-in page is now being redirected to Gmail’s sign-in page. This is a change Google has been rolling out to every business customer, and it is consistent for all users as of March 1, 2014.

This change will not affect your email address, inbox, contacts, or any other aspect of your spam-filtered Tranquility email account. The only change will be to the way in which you sign in.

Previously, you simply had to enter your username and password to sign in. In the future, you will need to enter your full tnetmail.net address. In general, this will be your username followed by @tnetmail.net. For example:

If you’ve previously logged in with:

Username: johnsmithPassword: hunter2

You must now log in with:

Username: johnsmith@tnetmail.netPassword: hunter2

Note that your password will not change. In the event this username does not work, your account may have a unique configuration – don’t hesitate to give us a call at 573-443-3983 and one of our technical support staff will be able to assist you.